es; but the erection of new houses off
St. James' Street in the year 1903 brought the ladies and the gentlemen
of the road again to its harborage; and they basked there for many weeks
in undisputed possession. Molesting none and by none molested, it was
an affair neither for the watchmen (whose glances askance earned them
many a handsome supper) or for the police who had sufficient to do in
the light of the street lamps that they should busy themselves with
supposed irregularities where that light was not. The orgies thus became
a nightly feature of the vagrant's life. There was no more popular hotel
in London than the "Coal Hole," as the wits of the company delighted to
style their habitation.

A city below a city! Indeed imagination might call it that. A replica of
famous catacombs with horrid faces for your spectres, ghoulish women and
unspeakable men groping in the darkness as though, vampire-like, afraid
of the light. Why Alban Kennedy visited this place, he himself could not
have said. Possibly a certain morbid horror of it attracted him. He had,
admittedly, such a passport to the caves as may be the reward of a
shabby appearance and a resolute air. The criminal company he met with
believed that he also was a criminal. Enjoying their confidence because
he had never excited their suspicion, they permitted him to lie his
length before reddened embers and hear tales which fire the blood with
every passion of anger and of hate. Here, in these caverns, he had seen
men fight as dogs--with teeth and claws and resounding yells; he had
heard the screams of a woman and the cries of helpless children. A
sufficient sense of prudence compelled him to be but an apathetic
spectator of these infamies. The one battle he had fought had been
impotent to save the object of his chivalry.

When first he came here, heroic resolutions followed him. He had
thrashed a ruffian who struck a woman, and narrowly escaped with his
life for doing so. Henceforth he could but assent to a truce which
implied mutual toleration; and yet he understood that his presence was
not without its influence even on these irredeemables. Men called him
"The Hunter," or in mockery "The Dook." He had done small services for
one or two of them--even written a begging letter for a rogue who could
not write at all, but posed as an "old public school man," fallen upon
evil days. Alban was perfectly well aware that this was a shameless
imposition, but his ideas of mora